Inappropriate Technology

In this paper, we investigate incentives other than altruism that developed countries have in improving technologies specific to developing countries. We propose a simple model of international trade between two regions, in which all individuals have similar preferences over an inferior good and a luxury good. The poor region has a comparative advantage in the production of the inferior good, and the rich in the luxury good. Even when costly adaptation of the technology to the poor region's characteristics is required -- which makes the technology inappropriate for local use -- we show that there are parameter configurations for which the rich region has an incentive to incur this cost. By raising the efficiency of the productive process of the developing region, the developed region can redirect its own productive resources toward the luxury good; it can also gain access to a more diversified set of consumption choices. Indeed, there are cases where the rich region would prefer to improve the poor region's technology for producing the inferior good rather than its own. Such technology transfers can increase the welfare of both regions. We apply our model to the Green Revolution and provide a quantitative assessment of its welfare effects.Technology improvements, Dynamic trade models, Welfare analysis

A site energy distribution function for the characterization of the continuous distribution of binding sites for gases on a heterogeneous surface

A binding site energy distribution function for a Jensen-Seaton isotherm and its limiting cases was proposed and successfully applied to the adsorption of several gas molecules on different essentially microporous carbons. According to the proposed model the studied carbon materials exhibit two energetic states where the site energy is exponentially or unimodaly distributed depending on the adsorption pressure. Carbons with a larger contribution from micropores seem to be in general more heterogeneous, with a wider binding site energy distribution, than less microporous carbons.Support from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Project PLE2009-0052) and the Genaralitat Valenciana (Project PROMETEO/2009/002-FEDER) are acknowledged. KVK would like to thank the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion for the Juan de la Cierva contract. ASA acknowledges a PhD fellowship from MEC, Spain

Data Scarcity or low Representativeness?: What hinders accuracy and precision of spatial interpolation of climate data?

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.Data scarcity is a major scientific challenge for accuracy and precision of spatial interpolation of climatic fields, especially in climatestressed developing countries. Methodologies have been suggested for coping up with data scarcity but data have rarely been checked for their representativeness of corresponding climatic fields. Here, influences of number and representativeness of climate data on accuracy and precision of their spatial interpolation were investigated and compared. Two precipitation and temperature indices were computed for a long time series in Bangladesh, which is a data scarce region. The representativeness was quantified by dispersion in the data and the accuracy and precision of spatial interpolation were computed by four commonly used error statistics derived through cross-validation. The precipitation data showed very little and sometimes null representativeness whereas the temperature data showed very high representativeness of the corresponding fields. Consequently, interpolated precipitation surfaces showed little accuracy and precision whereas temperature surfaces showed high accuracy and precision despite the scarce data. The results indicate that representativeness of climate data, i.e. variability of climate phenomenon, is more crucial than the number of data for accuracy and precision of spatial interpolation and should be treated with higher importance

Garbage, Power, and Environmental Justice: The Clean Power Plan Rule

Presented at the Environmental justice in the Anthropocene symposium held on April 24-25, 2017 at the Lory Student Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins Colorado. This symposium aims to bring together academics (faculty and graduate students), independent researchers, community and movement activists, and regulatory and policy practitioners from across disciplines, research areas, perspectives, and different countries. Our overarching goal is to build on several decades of EJ research and practice to address the seemingly intractable environmental and ecological problems of this unfolding era. How can we explore EJ amongst humans and between nature and humans, within and across generations, in an age when humans dominate the landscape? How can we better understand collective human dominance without obscuring continuing power differentials and inequities within and between human societies? What institutional and governance innovations can we adopt to address existing challenges and to promote just transitions and futures?Includes bibliographical references.April 2016This report was sponsored by the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School as part of a Visiting Scholars Series on the Environmental Justice implications of the US EPA's Clean Power Plan rule

New compound sets identified from high throughput phenotypic screening against three kinetoplastid parasites:an open resource

Using whole-cell phenotypic assays, the GlaxoSmithKline high-throughput screening (HTS) diversity set of 1.8 million compounds was screened against the three kinetoplastids most relevant to human disease, i.e. Leishmania donovani, Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma brucei. Secondary confirmatory and orthogonal intracellular anti-parasiticidal assays were conducted, and the potential for non-specific cytotoxicity determined. Hit compounds were chemically clustered and triaged for desirable physicochemical properties. The hypothetical biological target space covered by these diversity sets was investigated through bioinformatics methodologies. Consequently, three anti-kinetoplastid chemical boxes of ~200 compounds each were assembled. Functional analyses of these compounds suggest a wide array of potential modes of action against kinetoplastid kinases, proteases and cytochromes as well as potential host–pathogen targets. This is the first published parallel high throughput screening of a pharma compound collection against kinetoplastids. The compound sets are provided as an open resource for future lead discovery programs, and to address important research questions.The support and funding of Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation is gratefully acknowledgedPeer reviewe

The effect of broadband matching in simultaneous information and power transfer

This paper presents the implementation and the effect of broadband matching in simultaneous information and power transfer. The narrowband characteristic of antennas limited the applications of simultaneous information and power transfer. The simplified real frequency technique (SRFT) and the non-foster matching technique have been presented to improve the performance in terms of channel capacity and power delivery. Electromagnetic simulation and multiobjective optimization are performed to analyze the tradeoff between the channel capacity and power delivery in different matching conditions. The performance gain using the matching networks have been demonstrated and analyzedPeer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

High pressure pre-treatments promote higher rate and degree of enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose

The effect of high pressure (HP) pre-treatments on the subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose from bleached kraft Eucalyptus globulus pulp by cellulase from Tricoderma viride was evaluated. Pressure pre-treatments of 300 and 400 MPa during 5–45 min, lead to both an increased rate and degree of hydrolysis, reaching values ranging from 1.5- to 1.9-fold, quantified by the formation of reducing sugars. Both the pressure and time under pressure influenced the enzymatic hydrosability of the cellulosic pulps, with the former being more important. The results indicate that the pressure pre-treatments promoted an increased accessibility of cellulose towards cellulase in the cell wall. The results obtained open promising possibilities, to contribute to overcome conventional limitations of enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis for the production of fermentable glucose, for the production of second generation bioethanol and chemicals by enhancement of both rate and yield of hydrolysis. The results are also of interest for the preparation of “pressure engineered” celullose with incremented tailored hydrolysis patterns

Remodeling Capacity of Femoral Bone Defect by POP-CHA Bone Substitute: a Study in Rats\u27 Osteoclast (First Series of POP-based Bone Graft Improvement)

Reconstruction of large bone defects caused by trauma, excision of tumors, and congenital malformations can be very difficult to perform. Bone engineering offers an option to improve bone reconstruction procedures. This interdisciplinary field applies the principles of biology and engineering to the development of functional substitutes for damaged bone. Our research aimed to find the ideal scaffold for bone regeneration, focusing on Calcium and Phosphate combination. In this study, Plaster of Paris (POP) was combined with CHA and implanted in femoral condyles of rats. According to the experimental result, it can be concluded that there was no significant difference in response to the implantation of POP and POP-CHA in Sprague Dawley rat femur condyle (p<0.05). It can be stated that both POP-CHA and POP shows similar trait in bone healing

NASA Land Information System (LIS) Water Availability to Support Reclamation ET Estimation

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation identified the remote sensing of evapotranspiration (ET) as an important water flux for study and designated a test site in the Lower Colorado River basin. A consortium of groups will work together with the goal to develop more accurate and cost effective techniques using the enhanced spatial and temporal coverage afforded by remote sensing. ET is a critical water loss flux where improved estimation should lead to better management of Reclamation responsibilities. There are several areas where NASA satellite and modeling data may be useful to meet Reclamation's objectives for improved ET estimation. In this paper we outline one possible contribution to use NASA's data integration capability of the Land Information System (LIS) to provide a merger of observational (in situ and satellite) with physical process models to provide estimates of ET and other water availability outputs (e.g., runoff, soil moisture) retrospectively, in near real-time, and also providing short-term predictions